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Tim Sonnreich, May 2004. What you've always needed to know, but been too stupid to realise you didn't, about Democracy
At Member Training recently I tried to give an overview of International Relations theories, and it went fairly well, but I think a quick guide to something more fundamental - democratic theory - would be handy to. So here it is. Defining Democracy There are many debates, ranging from Australian politics to 3rd world development priorities, which require you to have an understanding and definition of democracy. Please avoid the temptation to wax lyrical about the ancient Greeks - or anything else you have learned in any course that includes the words "introduction to..." and instead simply say that democracy is a system of governance that seeks to maximise: - Accountability - Representation - Participation. "Accountability" means that at every level there is some sort of oversight and everyone is answerable to someone. Basically it's what people mean when they talk about 'checks and balances'. So the lower houses of both State and Federal Parliament, well the government at least, are held accountable to their upper houses (houses of review), and the whole parliament is answerable to the people every 3-6 years when there are elections. Plus the decisions of parliament can be scrutinised by the court system, and the Constitution - which is enforced by the High Court and the Governor General. But the courts are also accountable. Firstly the judges are picked by the parliament and can be sacked by them too. Plus the Constitution can changed by the people via a referendum and the courts can usually only interpret laws, not create them, which again come from the parliament. In short it's what called: "The Separation of Powers" Judiciary (courts) Executive (government) Legislative (parliament) "Representation" refers to the fact that democracy is a system that derives its credibility, its 'mandate', directly from the people. I'll talk about mandates in more detail later, but the principle of representation means that all citizens and peoples have a right to be heard in their political system. This is problematic though because democracy is also about voting and that's a process that inherently benefits 'majorities' over 'minorities' so how can minorities be properly represented? Well that's the question that leads to many debates, but there are many structural responses built into most democracies. For one there are different levels or 'tiers' of government (local, state and federal) which give people multiple opportunities to be heard. Secondly remember that the minority is not excluded from the system - that's what the Opposition is for, and it has many powers. Additionally there the rights and restrictions built in to the Constitution to protect minorities. And finally there are different voting systems in use that attempt to compensate for the tendency of majorities to dominate the system. The simplest example is "Proportional Voting" which is used in the federal upper house (Senate), which simply means that political parties receive a percentage of the available seats, equal to the percentage of the overall votes they received. So if a party represents the views of 10% of Australians, assuming all 10% voted for that party at an election, the party would then control 10% of the Senate seats. Whereas in the lower house, which uses a different voting system ("Optional Preferential") that same party, with the same number of voters, would be unlikely to win any seats at all. This is why the Senate is considered a 'house of review' - because it includes a far greater spectrum of views than are represented in the lower house, and so it modifies potential laws to be inclusive of the minority views that they represent. But it's obviously not perfect. Many minority groups are not officially represented in the Senate (eg there are no parties specifically representing the views of minority religions, sexualities or ethnicities - which can sometimes be a problem). That's why you need to debate these issues and why I'm writing this article. "Participation" is the most basic and arguably the most important principle of democracy. It's so crucial because it underpins the other two principles and because it is the fundamental basis for democracy - government 'by' the people, 'for' the people... blah, blah, blah. So simply put, participation means that; unless there is a very good reason, everyone deserves a vote and all votes should have equal weight. Clearly there are exceptions to this - eg. We don't let mentally ill people vote, or children (but there was a finals debate at 2004 Worlds on the topic that we should give children voting rights), or hard-core criminals (but round one of Australs last year was on the topic of prisoners voting rights) - so you need to think very carefully about this issue. Denying people the right to vote is one of the most serious things a government can do in a democracy, and something that has been thoroughly abused in the past 100 years. Deeper Analysis Ok, now you have the basics of democratic theory, how can you build on it and develop it into more sophisticated analysis - since that's the stuff that wins debates against strong teams. Well, there are many ways to develop democratic theory, here's one example - mandate theory. As I said before, a mandate is the authority politicians have to make decisions that derives from the fact that you voted for them. That's a 'direct' mandate. There are also indirect mandates, for say appointed officials (judges, public servants, etc) they have a mandate or authority because they were given power by people who you voted for, or the law/constitution empowers them to act on behalf of other people - like you. Ok how is used? Well the clearest example of a direct mandate is when a government tries to implement polices they ran as an election platform. So basically political party X campaigns before an election saying "vote for us and we'll do A, B and C". Then they win the election and claim a 'mandate' to do A, B and C - because you voted for them knowing it would mean those policies would be enacted. Simple right? Sometimes. But the deeper analysis stems from the understanding that elections are far more complicated than that. If would be fine if every political party only had one policy, or maybe two or three - but in fact they have way more than that. And this is compounded by the fact that there are so few viable political parties (there are over a hundred registered parties but very few have the cash, the brains or the organisational capacity to seriously campaign) that people almost never vote for a party they entirely agree with - they vote for a party the mostly agree with. So to use my previous hypothetical - the majority of people might have wanted policies A and B, but not C. But they liked even less of the policies advocated by the other parties, so still voted for party X. Does that mean party X has a mandate for all their policies? Most people would say no. Plus what about spontaneous policies - not everything a government does was part of their election platform. What about in emergencies (like September 11) the government didn't campaign on specific policies relating to events that no one imagined would happen - so they have no mandate. Or don't they? Well strictly speaking, no they don't have a direct mandate But they do have a lot of legitimacy that comes from the fact that they majority of people vote for them. You see political parties don't just campaign on policies - they campaign on philosophy, and people know that. Voters know that electing the Liberal Party in Australia means 4 years of philosophically "conservative" policy and knowing that, if they still vote for the Liberals, then surely they are delivering a mandate for conservative policies in general, and the election platform more specifically? You could argue that. But as per usual, there are some problems. You see most democracies are bi-cameral (two houses of parliament) and the weird thing is that very, very few political parties in Australia, Britain and everywhere except America, get a majority of seats in both houses. It happens sometimes (think of the Kennett years) but it's increasingly rare as more and more minority parties gain prominence. So what does that mean? Well it could be that people are a bunch of stupid monkeys (good chance of that) OR it might be that they are in fact highly intelligent monkeys who purposefully split their vote between the two houses to deliberately create conflicting mandates. "Whoa, slow down egghead", I hear you say. Let's look at that more closely. So arguably the majority of Australians wanted the Liberal Party to be the government. But if that same majority had wanted all of the Liberals' policies and 4 years of totally conservative policies, why didn't they give the Libs a majority of seats in the upper house so they wouldn't have tree-huggers and communists modifying and blocking their legislation? Well maybe they wanted it that way. Take the GST for example. Howard made it pretty clear that if he was elected to a second term, he'd introduce a GST on almost everything. And the people voted him in, so I guess they were ok with that. BUT they also gave the Democrats the balance of power (the deciding votes) in the Senate - and they had made it pretty clear that although they would support the GST, they would want to modify it in certain ways. So if we assume people aren't stupid monkeys, then it means they wanted a GST, but not the exact GST being offered by the Libs, so they split their vote (voted Lib in the lower and Democrat in the upper) and got what they wanted. In that case the Libs had every right to claim a 'mandate' to pass the GST, but the Democracts also had mandate to modify it... complex stuff, eh? What about the fact that politicians often hate each other and wont compromise? That's another problem. The previous example shows that "conflicting mandates" can sometimes be resolved fairly easily. But there are times when voters really are just stupid and make it impossible for equally stupid politicians to find a solution. Take Sri Lanka for example. 'Lanka ( as I like to call it) has a big problem with some pesky terrorist/freedom fighters called the Tamil Tigers. The Tigers want to carve off a fair slice of Lanka and make it a Tamil theme park (or something). Lankan politicians fall into two main categories - those who are willing to talk about giving the Tigers a theme park, and those who rather just kill the Tigers. In their infinite wisdom the Lankan people voted for a softy as Prime Minister and a psycho as President. So the PM had a mandate to compromise and the President had a mandate to shoot people who wanted to compromise... hmm, problem. So what happened? Well it was a stalemate until the PM took a trip overseas to ask my advice, and the President sacked him and dissolved the parliament. Nice. So there was a proper little scandal over who had the mandate. There are four possibilities:
But you should be ready for lots more debates than the few examples I have given here. Think about how you could use democratic and mandate theories for these common topics:
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